Twitter as a medium for marketing

Twitter enjoys worldwide adoption with 500M registered users who generateover 400M tweets and 1.6B search queries every day. Effective Twitter ads leverage connections and broaden user reach. These ads also promote users to opt in to user messaging, participate in contests, promotions, and sales, visit user online store, extend their engagement with user, and create opportunities with likes and other actions.

Advertisers typically promote three types of products: tweets, accounts, and trends. With the “promoted tweets" option, a tweet is provided by the advertiser and it is inserted in the timelines or search results of all users who are targeted.

A Promoted Tweet can either be a Tweet that user account has already created before and which user can pay to promote to a wider audience , or it’s a Tweet designed specifically as an ad that will appear in users’ timelines and search results but not user own Twitter account. The former option can help increase engagement on user Twitter handle, and the engagement will appear to be organic.

The “promoted accounts" option enables advertisers to acquire more followers and build a larger community of advocates. By choosing the Followers (Promoted Account) option, a link to promote user account, rather than a Tweet to promote a separate URL, will show up in users’ timelines. Users have 140 characters to make his account seem awesome and worth following, so make every character count. The promoted account (provided by advertisers) is shown in the search results and in the “Who to follow" section of targeted users’ profiles.

Promoted Trends. If the user looking to start a conversation around a topic, Promoted Trends allows him to choose a relevant hashtag and place his Tweet at the top of the list of trending topics.
Twitter as a medium for marketing

 

Advertisement classification: Target audience

Advertising can be classified by four main criteria: purpose, target audience, geographic area and medium. Advertising is not aimed at everybody. Each advertisement has a target audience it is intended to reach.

The advertising message is therefore, tailor-made to address and influence the selected target audience. These are the people who are most likely to buy the product.

Once the target audience is decide and what they are looking for in terms of the product or service is offered it is time to decide what the advertisement will say.

Advertisement should always be written to communicate a message that will be seen as important by the target customer. The advertisement should be clearly and convincingly “speak” to the target audience, explaining the important benefits of the product or service offer.

The word, phrases, style and main message of the advertisement are carefully selected to appeal to the particular group targeted.
Advertisement classification: Target audience

Advertisement classification based on geography

Advertising can be classified by four main criteria: purpose, target audience, geographic area and medium.
• National advertising
The term national advertising refers to advertising by multinational marketers or the owner of a trademark product or service sold through different distribution outlets wherever they may be.

• Regional advertising
Regional advertising is carried out by producers, wholesalers, distributors and retailer that concentrate their efforts in a relatively large, but not national , geographic region.

• Local advertising
Local advertising is much the same as regional advertising. Local advertising is directed at an audience in a single trading area, either a city or state.

• International advertising
International advertising can be viewed as a communication process that takes place in multiple cultures that differ in terms of values, communication styles and consumption pattern.
Advertisement classification based on geography 

Children and Fast Food Advertising

Children have been targeted by soda advertisers since the early twentieth century.

Television greatly expanded the ability of advertiser to reach children, especially on during children programs on saturday mornings, meant that advertisers could market directly to the age group of their choice.

By the 1960s, advertisers had identified children as a separate market, as fast food chains join soda companies in targeting children.

Food advertisements account for well over 50% of all advertisements targeting children on national network and food is the most frequently advertised product category on children’s TV.

In addition to television advertising, fast food chains also created child oriented characters such as Ronald MacDonald and began offering meals made especially for children, such as Happy Meals with toys and the creation of playgrounds for children.

Advertisers are trying to create situations where consumers are constantly exposed to their brand names.

Products are displayed in as many places as possible, whether it is on the grocery store shelf, in a television carton, or on the cover of a book.

Finally, the companies developed movie tie-ins and made special arrangements with theme parks such as Disneyland, which has had long history of selling fast food.

Children themselves have little buying power but they do have pester power. Busy parents simply take the easy way out and give in to children’s constant pestering. In addition, advertisers believe that childhood experiences will be remembered throughout a lifetime.

In United States in early 1991, a study reveled that children watching cartoon shows for a four hour period on atypical Saturday morning were bombarded with total food commercials.

The product advertised were dominated by sugar coated cereals, candy cookies, fruit flavored drinks, chocolate syrup, fast food meals and pizza.

Besides food advertisement, advertisements for fast food chains have strongly increased in the United States and in Europe during last 15 years reaching almost a third of all food advertisements in the United States.
Children and Fast Food Advertising

Fast Food Advertisement

During the 1920s, White Castle, the first fast food advertised in newspapers. It was slow to value radio advertising but did have promotions on radio during the 1930s.

Most of its advertising was targeted at working class. This changed during the 1950s, when White Castle sponsored a children television show, The Cactus and Randy Show.

At that tine American spending in food continue to grow. The increase appears to have stemmed primarily from changes in foods purchased, including more food bought and eaten away from home.

During the second half of the century, consumers increasingly spent food dollars on meals outside the home.

McDonald’s did little national advertising in the 1950s. In 1959, Minneapolis McDonald’s operator, Jim Zein, began running radio advertisements and his sales skyrocketed.

Based on this success, Ray Kroc encouraged other franchises and managers to launch their own campaigns.

Following this directive, two Washington D.C., franchisees, John Gibson and Oscar Goldstein, began sponsoring a children’s television show, called Bozo’s Circus.

This resulted in the creation of Ronald MacDonald, the McDonald’s corporate clown icon who appeared in local Washington, DC television commercial beginning in 1963.

During the following year, he appeared in national television on Thanksgiving. The company has regularly used McDonald its advertising campaigns and like the Quaker Oats man, people dressed as Ronald MacDonald make personal appearances throughout the nation.

Ronald McDonald’s a household word with its “billion served” advertisement slogan serving as evidence of its leadership in this area of fast food.

The Happy Meal has been pleasing kids since 1979. The Ronald MacDonald Houses are noted for their continued good work with families and children suffering from incurable disease.

Through extensive advertising, McDonald’s became the nation’s largest fast food chain during the 1970s.

McDonald’s and other fast food restaurant don’t rely just on advertising to get young people hooked. McDonald’s operates more than 8,000 playgrounds at its US restaurants to lure children onto the premises.

While McDonald’s is re-finding its belief in beef as its core product, KFC is continuing to harry its competitors by promoting chicken as a lean and healthy product, confronting the obesity and food hygiene issue rather than shying away from it.

The new positioning by company is summed up used by company advertising and marketing: tasty and safe, balanced nutrition, high quality, and healthy living.

In 2000, the fast food industry spent $3 billion a year on television advertising, much of it targeted at children.
Fast Food Advertisement

Food advertisement in United States

Marketing food is heightened interest to food manufacturers for a few reasons. The food industry is intensely competitive, with companies competing for a limited amount of ‘stomach share’.

Along with increased food availability is the massive increase in advertising and marketing for food products.

Many of the products food manufacturers produce are similar, and so companies use advertising to differentiate their brands.

According to a study published in 2003 by US Department of Agriculture, food manufacturers spent $7 billion on advertising in the United States in 1997.

The US food marketing system is the second largest advertiser in the US economy.

Food products accounts for significant percentage of television commercials, but not all foods are advertised equally.

Although product advertising may result in a public health benefit when the advertising promotes healthful products, the majority of the debate about food product marketing focuses around those products that may have harmful effects particularly among children.

Children in the United States are exposed to about 20 food commercials for every hour of television and the majority of these advertisements are high in fat, sugar and salt.

Beyond television, there are a multitude of other promotional practices designed to make children desire specific food products, including web sites, in school marketing, sales promotion, product placement, event sponsorships and movie tie-ins.
Food advertisement in United States